By Jameson O’Neal
When Mary Korlaske Nixon learned, at age 84, that she’d been Case No. 15 in the now-notorious University of Iowa stuttering study of 1939, she stuffed her rage into an envelope addressed to “The Monster.”
In her letter, she accused her onetime mentor of methodically turning her and other Iowa orphans into stutterers to help prove the theory of her mentor, UI speech pathologist Wendell Johnson, that “the affliction is caused by the diagnosis” – that is, that children tend to stutter when put under psychological pressure to avoid the slightest instance of dysfluency.
Betrayed by her supposed therapist, Mary retreated from the cruelties of other orphans to an attic where she kept a silver thimble, a keepsake from her mother that she called her “tiny cup for tears.”
Today she would need a bucket to bail out her fury.
The stinging words she directed at her “monster” struck me forcefully, because I had written a similar letter to my fourth-grade teacher. The school I attended was in Missouri. In reproducing the essence of the letter here, I’ve changed the teacher’s name to spare her any humiliation:
“Sister Anastasia:
“I don’t recall the first time I stuttered. It must have been a negligible event, like the first time I tripped on my shoelaces. But I do recall the first of the many times you ordered me to stop stuttering.
“You had asked me a question. Feeling nervous because we had to stand in full view of the class to give a response, I stammered in pronouncing the first few syllables. You interrupted me with this stern demand: ‘Jimmy, stop! Go back to the start of that sentence and say the entire thing without stuttering once!’
“There I stood, all eyes upon me, all ears attuned to the next sound to emerge from my mouth, and I knew with tremulous certainty that I would disgrace myself if I stumbled in my delivery. I turned cold with fear. I felt the wooziness and whole-body pinpricks that I now know to be symptoms of hyperventilation. I tightened my facial muscles to hold back tears of defeat.
“I opened my mouth, determined to speak as flawlessly as Harry Caray tallying balls and strikes. What emerged, of course, was a sputtering of s’s, an elongation of l’s, a desperate, terrified effort to spit out some acceptable sounds before passing out or perhaps even dying of embarrassment, if such a fate were truly possible.
“My classmates laughed derisively, and one of them – his name, damn him, was Ronnie – mocked me, and you, you who would stare a child into shudders of shame for whispering to a friend, tolerated their derision, thinking, I now suppose, that it was a dose of the bitter medicine I needed to break the wretched habit I’d adopted.
“You failed me, Sister. In ignorance and hardheartedness, in twisted earnestness, in rigidity and antagonism I can scarcely believe were ever condoned, you failed me.
“My stutter became my distinguishing trait, a freakish abnormality that marked me as a buffoon and apparent half-wit. In the years after I left your classroom, I withdrew. I spoke only when necessary, and only to a patient few. I took refuge in books, and I taught myself to write, because I never stuttered on paper.
“Years later, a public school vice principal, informed of my impediment by a teacher, summoned me to his office and introduced me to a speech therapist, a woman who would change the course of my life.
“I met with her weekly. She was warm, accepting, encouraging. She deflated the immense fearfulness that had so long surrounded speech. She taught me to relax my mouth, jaw and throat, to speak with exaggerated deepness and slowness, to laugh, to feel free to stutter, even to sing what I couldn’t simply say.
“I can’t envision her face, but I remember her as beautiful, for she was, in a rich sense, my redeemer, the person who led me from solitary confinement to community. She was the antidote to you, Sister.
“In time, despite repeated setbacks, I attained virtual fluency. I joined my high school speech team. I started making friends and dating. I broke through the barrier of freakishness.
“I forgive you now, Sister, because I don’t want to go on hauling the weight of hating you.”
I never mailed that letter. I wrote it as an exercise in making peace with my past. It was part of a much bigger project, for Sister Anastasia was merely an influence, not the sole or even primary cause of my stutter, much less of the deep-seated anxiety in which it was entangled.
For all the hostility I felt toward Sister Anastasia, I imagine it was a candle flame to Mary Korlaske Nixon’s bonfire, for Sister Anastasia, misguided though she was, sincerely sought to put a stop to my stuttering. Wendell Johnson and his researchers, by critical contrast, deliberately disabled innocents at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport.
I relate my tale because I know the university is wrestling with the question of whether to remove the name of Dr. Johnson, a man who committed a heinous act on the way to becoming an extraordinary healer, from its speech and hearing center.
I want to mention this telling fact to those who will make that decision: I cannot for the life of me recall the name of my redeemer, but I can never forget the name of Sister Anastasia.
This column was published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on July 17, 2001. It received the First Place Award for Best Serious Column, Daily Division, Circulation 10,000 or more, in the National Newspaper Association’s Better Newspaper Contest, 2002.